Cosmic composer turns light waves from stars into music

This article was taken from the September 2012 issue of
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Ziggy played guitar; Meklit Hadero plays star guitar.
The Ethiopian-born musician built "star sounds" -- light waves
from stars made audible by Kepler mission co-investigator Jon
Jenkins -- into Earthbound, the latest album from her band
CopperWire. Producer Chris Coniglio then used Izotope Spectron
software to hybridise the star sounds with other instruments. "I
wanted to find a way to play the star sounds in the live shows,"
explains Hadero, who is also a TED senior fellow. "Chris and I
devised a way to play a mixture of the star sounds and the
guitar using Abelton Live and Izotope Spectron. The star sounds are
truly otherworldly -- you really feel like you're on a rocket
ride."

Earthbound will also expand
into mobile apps: Starbound Remi(X) creates nearly two million
remixes of the album's lead single "Phone Home", based on any
ten-digit number typed in by the user. A planned AR app will
feature a 3D CopperWire spaceship that flies users "into the music
itself, with every song as a different level of a game".

The high-tech ambition of
Earthbound is a long way from Hadero's folk-music and
east-African origins, but she's returning there with her Nile
Project, which will gather musicians from the Nile Basin countries
on board a boat made from recycled plastic water-bottles. "I think
my approach to music is pretty experimental," the 32-year-old says.
"You go where the sound calls."